


Joy in the Evening

by Heliophile



Category: Jeeves & Wooster, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: First Time, Humour, M/M, egregious over-egging of pudding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-28
Updated: 2011-04-28
Packaged: 2017-10-18 18:48:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/192079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heliophile/pseuds/Heliophile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...not having imbibed anything but tea I was at a loss to explain the odd sensation of having a fizzy champagne-like substance in the bloodstream accompanied by a full flotilla of butterflies in the stomach region.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Joy in the Evening

Joy in the Evening

 

It was one of those days when even the gloomiest sort of cove would be dashed hard put to it not to be full of oomph and the joys of s. – you know, the sunlit pip emma following hard upon a morning positively awash with larks and snails on their respective thorns and wings and whatnot, with a brief interval comprising a light lunch at the Drones and the gentle stroll back to the Wooster residence –  and as your Bertram W. is notoriously not of the melancholy persuasion (not unless, of course, in imminent peril of marriage or a visitation from Aunt Agatha or both, should such an appalling prospect ever be made likely by the most dreadful concatenation of circs imaginable) I was indeed full of the j and just about as light-hearted as a hatful of larks. And with jolly good reason, too, having but yestreen succeeded, with Jeeves’ inestimable aid, in oiling out of the dread walk to the scaffold, or altar, with a cousin of my old pal Kipper Herring’s, of devastating exterior – the cousin’s, I mean, not Kipper’s – but, upon subsequent better acquaintance, equally devastating moral rectitude in the matter of pre-prandial refreshment and the post-prandial cig, not to mention frequenting the Drones club and enjoying the occasional flutter on the sport of Kings.

 

But all this is of little moment and has only the most tangential bearing upon the present account, and I’m afraid I seem to be digressing a bit – one doesn’t wish to leap in to the _res_ too much _in medias_ , of course, for fear the reader will be wondering who is who and what is what, but I do seem to have erred a bit too far in the opposite direction in the present instance; suffice it to say that I was in the most topping spirits and indeed quite restored to mid-season form, and was even now meditating upon some suitable way in which to express my gratitude upon Jeeves’ return from a minor errand undertaken in connection with purchasing the necessaries for a spot of dinner.

 

The ringing of the doorbell broke in upon my pleasant meditations just as I was weighing up a number of pros and contras, considering on the one hand the possibilities of living without some rather fetching cravats I was quite fond of but upon which, I knew, Jeeves gazed with the eye of that chapess whose name I don’t recall for the moment but – ah, yes, I knew it would come to me – Jael, you know – the one who took a spike to the offending object, though in her case it was somebody’s head and in Jeeves’ case a mere couple of cravats in a rather _osée_ shade of violet I thought rather becoming – and on the other hand musing upon the option of a change in our forthcoming weekend plans and re-locating them from the metrop, always my own favoured stamping ground, to a pleasant rural nook known for the propensity of the local fish to engulf the fisherman’s hook with a very sporting disregard for their own preservation. Jeeves is rather fond of fishing, as I believe I may have mentioned in other annals, and it is to the consumption of quantities of said fish that I attribute his prodigious mental powers.

 

Being thus interrupted betwixt cravats and fish, as it were, and realising instanter that it could not be Jeeves as he very naturally has his own key, and that he, being absent, was therefore not in a position to answer the door as he normally does, I left off my cogitations for the nonce in order to attend the portal myself. The person without was a young lady, quite easy on the eye though without being prime pin-up or harem material as are, you may recall, some girls of my acquaintance, viz. Florence Craye and Madeleine Basset – a fact which has often hoodwinked the unwary into overlooking the fact that they are of iron will, in the one case, and as soppy a beazel as ever maintained that the stars are God’s daisy-chain, in the other – a point which for some reason I found frightfully reassuring. Deceptive exteriors have ever been Bertram’s downfall, and I constantly endeavour to learn from my experiences though with, honesty compels me to confess, limited success. Upon closer examination I realised – prompted in part by the enthusiasm with which the young person why hello Mr. Wooster’d me – that we were in fact no strangers to one another, said y.p. being, in point of fact, none other than Mrs. Biffy Biffen and at one and the same time Jeeves’ niece Mabel; whereupon I naturally urged her to avail herself of the hospitality of the Wooster household and make free with it as she would.

 

Mabel, or as I should perhaps say Mrs. Biffen, breezed in and unburdened herself of a parcel while I disposed appropriately of her hat and coat – modelling myself on Jeeves, you understand, though not up to his high standard in the matter; she then enquired after the whereabouts and good health of her esteemed uncle, and upon learning that he was not on the premises but expected to return shortly, enquired whether she might await his arrival _in situ_. She thus presented me at once with a dilemma which the more acute among you will readily anticipate: as the wife of a bosom chum of mine, I was naturally inclined to invite her to take her ease in the drawing room, while as the niece of my gentleman’s gentleman she might have been disposed to await his reappearance at the old homestead on his turf, as it were, in the kitchen. Personally I take a rather free and easy attitude to these social niceties, but Jeeves is a bit of a stickler for form and propriety and I didn’t wish to put him to any embarrassment – particularly when I was, as mentioned, very much in his debt. Fortunately, as we were engaged in a sort of excuse-me dance about the hallway, I was saved from any further vacillation by the timely materialisation of the man himself and Mabel, having embraced her uncle with every manifestation of fondness, announced that she hoped she might impose upon us for a cup of tea and promptly hoofed it into the kitchen herself, _avec_ parcel which, upon her opening it, proved to be a very toothsome-looking cake.

 

Well the l. and the s. of it is, as Mabel chatted away quite indiscriminately to me about old Biffy and to Jeeves about various family matters almost simultaneously, we were soon seated three about the kitchen table enjoying a spot of oolong and the aforementioned cake which she had brought, as she explained, as a present for Jeeves but which was more than ample to cater for a small party of appetites and by no means limited to one or two takers. Jeeves supplied some rather decorative little sandwiches to supplement the cake, and I urged all parties to supplement the undoubted restorative properties of tea with a drop of any beverage to be found in my cellar – various Aunts of mine have been known to indulge in a soupcon of sherry with cake, of which this was a particularly fine example – but in the event both Mabel and Jeeves declined with thanks, and as I make a point of it never to partake alone while in company, if you take my meaning, consideration of matters beverage-related was postponed to another occasion.

 

As the afternoon trickled past in pleasant conversation, Mabel being the sort of sisterly girl to whom you feel you can confide your woes as well as relate your triumphs, if you see what I mean, as well as having many a lively tale of her own with which to regale us, Jeeves dispensing sage counsel and gazing on with avuncular approval the while, it began to be borne in upon me that this was all very cosy and indeed a dashed agreeable way to spend the p.m. – considerably more so, in fact, than in the society of most of my relatives including, though not confined to, my Aunt Agatha who, it is well known, eats broken bottles without a second thought and conducts human sacrifices at the time of the full moon. In fact almost the only person of my own flesh and b. with whom I can honestly say I have spent as congenial an afternoon is my Aunt Dahlia, with whom I have always enjoyed the most cordial relations despite her habit of addressing me as a blot on the landscape in tones nicely calculated to carry across several counties due, one imagines, to having spent much of her youth riding to hounds with the Quorn and the Pytchley in whose company a carrying voice is apparently de rigeur should any hound be so derelict in its duties as to give a rabbit the baleful eye in lieu of concentrating its efforts on the fox as per instructions.

 

The sun, eventually, began to evince signs of westering-ho and Mabel exclaimed that it was time she was getting home, confiding in us as she gathered her effects that it was a particular boon on our part to have offered her our hospitality for the afternoon as she believed her absence was just the circ Biffy needed in order to place in readiness a surprise gift for her birthday which, it transpired, fell upon the morrow, as he was perfectly incapable of organising such a thing without her covert cooperation. She related this detail with such fondness that it was immediately apparent there were no rifts to be found anywhere about this particular lute, despite the fact that it was a good year and counting since she and Biffy had tied the knot – a dashed sight better going than some matrimonies I could bring to mind, I can tell you. Indeed, when I think of some of the beazels to whom I have come within a toucher of finding myself hitched _ad aeternam_ , I can but shudder and thank my lucky star that I have thus far always oiled out of the matter just in time. Which brought me back to my earlier musings _in re_ cravats vs. fish, as you may recall.

 

I was still sitting at the kitchen table gazing thoughtfully into my cup when Jeeves rematerialised, having ushered Mabel to the door in due fashion.

 

“It’s a rum thing, Jeeves”, I mused.

 

“Yes sir?”

 

“All this matrimonial bliss malarkey, you know. I mean, here’s Mabel – or, as it might be, Mrs. Charles E. Biffen – as delightful a girl as ever broke bread, whose cup positively runneth over on the matrimonial stakes if appearances are anything to go by, and there’s Biffy, the fortunate recipient of her affections despite being so absent-minded as to forget his own head if it were not firmly affixed to his person. And here am I, though not, I daresay, quite the last word in eligible bachelordom, still by no means a complete and utter loss, I hope, and yet apparently condemned to a succession of hair-raisingly near things with the most unsuitably tough-minded demoiselles – or the daffiest, though since Madeleine is now safely Lady-Sidcup’ed I do breathe a little easier and am markedly less inclined to wake suddenly in the night bathed in chill perspiration – here am I, I say, seemingly bereft of all hope of finding that special someone.” I noted something of a shadow crossing Jeeves’ brow at this point, and hastened to reassure him that I had no intention of tempting fate by attempting to secure any such alliance, knowing it would most certainly result in disaster not to mention necessitating his departure from the Wooster home, as I was aware of his firm disinclination to remain in the employ of any married gentleman. Not, he has previously assured me, out of any antipathy for the ladies in question – in most cases, at any rate – but out of a keen awareness that he would never countenance a difference of opinion with the lady of the house with regard to such delicate matters as the proper care and feeding of the young master’s spats or waistcoats and the like.

 

I had risen and was now gazing pensively out of the window, cup in hand, while Jeeves busied himself with the clearing of the tea-things and some initial preparations for the dinner whose essential ingredients it had been his mission to procure a little earlier in the present narrative. I would never, I thought –  though did not add, some things it being rather OTT to mention out loud – willingly hasten his departure from my bosom as it is quite obvious to both self and, I imagine, my reader that I would not survive five minutes without him.

 

“Things would be a dashed sight simpler if I could only marry you, I suppose,” I continued – “not that one chap can marry another chap, of course, but I only mean to say it would be a jolly good state of affairs sometimes if one could – no more of this daisy-chain furore on the one hand, nor this business of moulding the young swain and issuing the old nolle prosequi’s with regards to cocktails and the like on the other.” A sort of cracking sound, that might somewhat put one in mind of the twig breaking beneath the foot of the careless Indian tracker, in the unlikely event that one should encounter a careless Indian tracker in the vicinity of W1, issued from a Jeevsian direction, together with an indrawn breath, but I failed to register their significance for the moment and went on, “I mean if I were me, which I am, of course, and you were, shall we say for the sake of argument, a cook-housekeeper, I should propose to you on the spot and family propriety be blowed – not that I mean to imply anything less than wholly manly about you, you know – that is to say, quite the same would apply if I were a young lady in whose service you were employed – no, a young lady couldn’t have a gentleman’s gentleman, could she? But I suppose if I had a household of sufficient extent to warrant a butler, for example – well then – except that a lady can’t propose, can she? Why is that, I wonder; it doesn’t seem altogether fair, does it? Well I should jolly well make it clear that a proposal was invited – ” It was at about this point that I became aware that I was rattling on rather, but for some reason I couldn’t seem to rein in the horses, as it were, and sort of rattled on a bit further, thus:

 

“After all, we do have rather a convivial sort of arrangement – that is, I can’t imagine a better one as far as I’m concerned, and though I often wonder why you stick it rather than biffing off to become Prime Minister at the very least, I suppose it must suit you rather or you wouldn’t. Stick it, that is, despite a number of very generous offers I know for a fact to have been issued by unscrupulous poaching Aunts, Uncles, cousins and sundry other fauna. Not to mention certain understandings of yours with cooks and housekeepers that have swum into my ken over the years, but which have uniformly come to naught, even as you have nobly extracted me from the bouillon on many an occasion – ” It was at this point that a further intake of breath of Jeevsian provenance impinged upon my consciousness, and I turned away from the window to ascertain the cause. I realised, being on occasion a veritable Sherlock Holmes in these matters, that the earlier cracking noise had doubtless stemmed from the fact that Jeeves had broken the handle off the teacup in his grasp and which he had, apparently, been about to wash up; I further noticed that – although normally quite imperturbable – he had an expression of anguish on his face that I was forced for want of any other possible explanation to attribute to the fact that he seemed to have slightly nicked a finger with the keen edge of the broken-off teacup handle as evidenced by the tiny bead of blood visible on one fingertip. Now it is quite unheard of for Jeeves to be maladroit; he is in fact the veritable epitome of adroitness, if that is the word I want, and I therefore deduced from the whole teacup-handle-and-indrawn-breath business that he was in the grip of some strong emotion. Mentally revising my current combination of tie, shirt, cufflinks and the like, I determined that these were not among the probable causes of his perplexity and was about to enquire as to his wellbeing when he composed himself with visible effort and said,

 

“I had not thought matrimony a subject with which you were inclined to preoccupy yourself, sir?”

 

“Well no, it’s just when you see two such souls as Mabel and Biffy hitting it off so bally well, well, one cannot help but envy them a little, you know? No more flitting about from flower to flower, no more idle exchanges of a kind which always seem to land me up to the eyeballs in the consommé, but rather a sort of perfect chumminess and domestic harmony wherein two such different souls seem perfectly content to differ but to differ together, as it were. Rather like yourself and self, although of course with certain material differences.” I believe I may have acquired a slightly roseate hue about the tips of the ears at this point, as I realised that I was touching upon a somewhat more delicate subject than was the usual substance of our converse, and seeing Jeeves shudder slightly I realised at once that the tenor of my remarks must have been somewhat distasteful to him. I hastened to recoup myself, but like th’unwary traveller upon a lonesome road only succeeded in miring myself deeper;

 

“Not that I mean to imply anything untoward, of course – I mean, an Achilles and Patroclus sort of thing – ”

 

But here inspiration seemed to desert me and I’m afraid I rather faltered to a halt, quite unable to take my eyes off the tiny drop of blood that betrayed Jeeves’ unexpected and indeed almost unprecedented perturbation. He is made of stern stuff, you know, and has on previous occasions responded with no more than an “Indeed sir” accompanied by an eyebrow raised some one-eighth of an inch to news of the most disturbing nature even including the imminent arrival of my Aunt Agatha. Indeed I rather think that the only other time I have seen him so visibly unmanned was when my old pal Rocky Rockmetteller Todd – the poet chap who lives on Long Island, don’t you know – revealed that he often didn’t bother to dress at all if no visitors were anticipated but spent entire days in his pyjamas, merely donning a turtleneck sweater over the top – a piece of info that very nearly brought Jeeves to a state of nervous collapse – but stern stuff notwithstanding, it was thus unmanned that he seemed to be now. Well I was feeling in a somewhat cat-on-hot-bricks sort of vein myself, for some reason, which was odd considering that it had been and was still such a corking day, and not having imbibed anything but tea I was at a loss to explain the odd sensation of having a fizzy champagne-like substance in the bloodstream accompanied by a full flotilla of butterflies in the stomach region. I was however quite conscience-stricken to have somehow distracted the dear fellow to such an extent that he had sustained an injury, however slight, and advanced upon him, extracting the regulation fresh handkerchief as I did so, and seized the wronged finger with a view to wrapping said kerchief securely around it. This of necessity involved my close proximity to the Jeevsian person, of course, and further necessitated my taking a firm grasp of the hand to which said finger was attached in order to minister to it.

 

Now I don’t know if you’ve ever had a comparable experience, but there are certain persons to whom standing in close proximity has a marked effect on the Wooster physiology, to wit causing the pulse to race, the breath to quicken and certain other effects which it would I think be _de trop_ to describe in detail in these pages; proximity to Stilton Cheeswright, Roderick Spode – or Lord Sidcup, as he is more properly addressed these days – or my old Headmaster the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn, have all routinely caused the Wooster flesh to wilt in the extreme, while proximity to certain close chums of my school and college days has been known to have a contrary effect. Such a contrary effect I had often noted in quite marked form when Jeeves performed some of his more intimate duties, such as assisting me into the old soup-and-fish before dinner or, especially if somewhat under the influence and consequently less able than usual to manage the business for myself, out of it after a late evening – though I have always taken considerable pains to conceal both the fact and the nature of said effect – and just such a contrary effect I noted now, in spades, which I rather attribute to the fact that the dear fellow was looking much less like a stuffed frog than usual and more like a rabbit caught in headlights, and was indeed, it seemed, currently subject to a racing pulse and quickening breath and so forth himself. Jeeves is in fact a rather well-constructed sort of chap, an inch or two taller than I and broad in proportion, and tending towards the solid and unobtrusively muscular where I am generally slender – possibly due to the fact that while moving in mysterious ways his wonders to perform he naturally engages in various quite strenuous fetchings and carryings and liftings and settings-down as he attends to the young master’s effects and person, while I on the other hand am frightfully fond of dancing and am renowned throughout the metrop and shires as one who can and will out-hoof the hoofiest on any dance-floor you care to mention.

 

But as I was saying, inspiration had quite deserted me and I found myself letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would” in the most emphatic terms, positively unable to advance what I by now fully appreciated could only be referred to as my suit. It is jolly fortunate that Jeeves is practically telepathic, although even he was temporarily tongue-tied on this occasion, and so it was that – tempering the awful terror that I might be about to scupper and indeed sever good relations on a permanent basis with the irrepressible hope that despite all odds Jeeves’ pulse might be r. and the breath q. for similar reasons to my own – I threw caution to the winds.

 

“I say, Jeeves – “

 

“Yes sir?”

 

“I don’t mean to presume, you know, but – dash it all, I don’t suppose for a moment that you – that is to say, Damon and Pythias might be said to have been on to a good thing, don’t you know, and I hope you know I’ve always held you in the highest esteem – ”

 

Fortunately at this point Jeeves un-froze to the extent that he recovered the powers of speech and spoke, in fact, with considerable eloquence, such that I was apprised, to my astonishment, of his own earlier dread that he might find himself obliged to quit my employment should I discover the fact that his devotion to me was not solely that of man to master, be their bond never so feudal, but was in fact of quite another nature. I learned a great deal of which I had hitherto been unaware in re the whole Achilles and Patroclus affair; David and Jonathan were also mentioned, I believe, as were Pylades and Orestes and a couple of chums named Nisus and Euryalus of whom I had never, while learning of their exploits at school – my school, that is, not N and E’s – suspected anything of the sort.

 

Joy was, naturally, unconfined and the whole two-hearts-that-beat-as-one thing took on a whole new and hitherto unsuspected dimension. Jeeves, it transpires, is every bit as adept in the _ars amatoria_ as he is in every other endeavour – though not, endearingly, from the very first, which resulted in the most delightful voyage of mutual exploration and discovery imaginable. Modesty forbids me from going into the matter in any greater detail in the present narrative.

 

I should add that, while exercising the utmost discretion, of course, as one would not wish to have the law breathing down one’s neck at intimate moments, we have in fact set our relationship on a new and altogether more satisfactory footing; although continuing to present to the outside world the face of master and man, as hitherto – this being the only circ under which two men can in fact live in close proximity in our present society without any eyebrows being raised – I have positively insisted on certain changes in our respective material situations; lawyers and bankers are fortunately famously unflappable, and thanks to Jeeves’ presence of mind no one individual among them is in full possession of all the details about the party upon whom I have bestowed half my kingdom. Jeeves insisted most strenuously that he preferred to have none of this, by the way, but I for once was quite adamant and maintained that I could not possibly place us in a situation where I might be in any way taking advantage, nor could I countenance leaving him less than fully provided for in the event of my eventually preceding him to the undiscovered country from whose bourne etc., and the law being the ass that it is there was no other way in which we could have material circs properly reflect the changed nature of our affiliation.

 

I should perhaps mention, _in fine_ , that these days I and even, I daresay, Jeeves, tend to look upon the whole business of occasionally spending an entire day without donning formal attire, à la Rockmetteller, in a startling but wholly enjoyable new light.

 


End file.
